I’m a basketball fan first and foremost, so the NBA playoffs are my favorite 38 weeks of the year. Every night, there’s one or two great games, and although a lot of people complain about the length of the playoffs, I just think it makes the whole thing more epic: It gives all the storylines time to build and come together.

However, I can tell I’m in the minority. Unlike me, most people aren’t willing to forego homework, classes and their social lives for three hours a night in order to watch a sport most people don’t care about. The way it is now, the NBA’s most important series, the culmination of months and months of play, draws about as much attention as the Cubs getting swept by the Pirates. So I’ve come up with three suggestions to Commissioner Stern to make the NBA more appealing to the masses, so that I actually have people willing to talk to me about the Jazz-Lakers series.

Tell the NHL to stop making their playoffs so damn awesome: I don’t consider myself a hockey guy, so it’s really frustrating that every time somebody flips on the NHL playoffs, it’s preposterously exciting. Immediately after the game comes on, there’s always a game-tying goal, and next thing you know, there’s 20,000 people singing that one song from the Heineken commercials. Playoff beards, fights, sudden death overtimes­­-it’s pretty cool. The other night, I settled down to watch the third period of the Blackhawks game, and next thing I remember, I was shirtless, sleeping next to a dumpster under a Blue Line station with the word “Byfuglien” shaved into my chest hair in all-caps. If the NHL keeps being so exciting, it diverts even more of the average sports fan’s attention away from the NBA.

Make the games more like NBA Street Vol. 2: My friend hooked up a Playstation 2 with the seminal 2002 game NBA Street Vol. 2 on it to our TV last week. Suffice it to say, it’s the best game ever invented. I’m not much of a video game player, but I’ve found myself spending hours at a time fending off all challengers with my team of choice, Nelly and the St. Lunatics. (Alternately, I play as my created version of myself, a 7-foot-2, 275-pound center with a blonde afro who has acquired the nickname “Elasticman” due to his outrageously great handles.) It’s the first video game I’ve ever seen that is entertaining enough that you can watch other people play it against each other, so I’m sure that if NBA players were somehow given the ability to jump 15-20 feet in the air, ratings would go higher than Elasticman himself completing an off-the-backboard alley-oop.

The changes will be easy: Eliminate goaltending and fouls, allow teams to use Gamebreakers if they accumulate enough trick points. (Imagine the strategy: “And Popovich has decided to pocket the Spurs’ Gamebreaker!”), and replace Reggie Miller with the color commentary of Bobbito Garcia. If the NBA was even slightly more like NBA Street Vol. 2, I guarantee it would immediately become the most watched sport on TV. Also, it will serve a dual purpose of almost guaranteeing NU’s own Kevin Coble a spot in the league, as rumors indicate that he’s spent his time off from injury working on perfecting his Off Da Heezy.

Guarantee my hometown New York Knicks the eighth seed in the East, every year: People accuse major sports leagues of helping out teams in big markets anyway, so why not just come out and do it? Please? We’ll be quick, and we won’t hurt anybody or get in anybody’s way. Just let the boys in orange and blue in, and you’ll see: Once you let Danilo Gallinari onto the national stage, the viewers won’t be able to turn away from his dashing good looks and delicate, manicured European jump shot. We can institute this rule for the first time next year, when Lebron stays in Cleveland, Dwyane Wade stays in Miami, Chris Bosh goes to the Clippers for no apparent reason, and the Knicks end up locking down our overwhelmingly stoppable David Lee/Chris Duhon one-two punch from now until eternity.

So, Commissioner Stern, there’s hope for getting our sport back in the limelight. You’ll just need to kill off your biggest rival for fringe major sport money, turn off gravity, and let my Brickerbockers for the first time since before the Isiah Thomas era. And maybe, just maybe, my dreams will come true, and highlights from that game I watched last night will show up before NFL training camp news on SportsCenter.

And consider making the St. Lunatics an actual NBA team. For a mildly successful 5-foot-3 rapper from 2002, Nelly can really play.

Assistant Sports Editor Rodger Sherman is a Medill Sophomore. He can be reached at [email protected].